I still own and even use a Palm T3. These days I mainly use it to read news via the wonderful but underappreciated AvantGo service. I have a shiny Nokia N82 for contacts, and the Palm conduits that haven't been updated since who knows when, leading to contact creep, multiple copies of the same contact. This is all to say that I wish that Palm would to return to its place as innovator.

In the midst of this gloom, Palm has confirmed that it will be showing off its new OS, Nova. Nova must be giving Microsoft's Vista or Apple's migration from its Classic OS to OS X a run for the longest delayed OS upgrade. Well, at least Apple and Microsoft continued to regularly update their OSes until they got a new one out. Palm's decided to split itself in two in 2003, with one company to develop the OS and another to build the handhelds. It's been downhill ever since. But don't expect devices with Nova until later in 2009.

That is why the $100m from Elevation is crucial. Even before the global economy started sputtering to standstill, Palm was on the ropes. It was down to a few hundred million in cash (and burning through it, at a rate of about $50m per quarter, with $223m on hand (and debt of $396m), and it needed more breathing room if the turnaround strategy had any hope of taking hold. This is especially true seeing as Palm is winding down its standalone handheld business, whether it admits it or not. Even though the Palm platform was a an early leader with the Treo, it is now very much in a crowded and highly competitive market with Nokia, RIM, Apple and even Google.

The stock market seemed to like the investment, bidding up Palm's bargain-basement stock. The stock went up a whopping 13% after the announcement, but in today's volatile market, that is a small amount, especially considering the stock is trading below $3.

None of this fills a Palm fan with joy. I know it's unrealistic for Palm to support my old T3. It probably wants to break with the recent past, not support it. As far as Nova, we'll have a clearer picture after CES in January, but at the moment, it seems Palm's future will continue to be a shadow of its glorious past. In a completely meta bit of quoting in the best spirit of blogging, I'll quote Om Malik, quoting venture capitalist Pip Coburn, quoting Warren Buffet: "Turnarounds seldom turn."